The Migration to EMV Chip Technology:EMV Implementation in the U.S. White Paper

What is EMV?

EMV is based on strong cryptography (both symmetric and asymmetric) and elaborate key management; a fundamental EMV principle is to digitally sign payment data to ensure transaction integrity. As opposed to magnetic stripe technology, a chip is extremely difficult to crack; card authentication and PIN verification are performed automatically and objectively by the chip. An important aspect of EMV is its use of dynamic data. Each transaction carries a unique ‘stamp’ which prevents the transaction data from being fraudulently reused, even if it is stolen from a merchant’s or processor’s database. EMV’s dynamic data feature basically says "if you can’t prevent data from being stolen, make the stolen data useless because dynamic data is only useful for the sole transaction it characterizes, nothing more."